The Lords of Misrule

Some are born great

Some achieve greatness

And some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare

Maybe Alpha males are more attracted to tango than are other kinds of men. Maybe tango makes Alphas out of previous Betas. Or maybe just being born and bred in cultures that tango is enough to do the trick. I don't know. This moll hasn't spent enough time in our gangsta's paradise to say for sure yet. I do know for sure that our floating craps game has a lot of high-rollers, and I always wonder: can kings really be friends with other kings?

I used to live in the real world. Lots of different social circles, but they had similar hierarchies. Lots of peasants, a couple of knights and lords, and one king. Maybe two but it was never easy. And everyone knew how everything worked, and everyone was happy. The Alpha males got all the women and all the steak and all the spotlight, and the Betas took everything that was left over. Life was simple.

Now here I am in this other world. Oh, there's lots of peasants here too. Lots of Beta men. And they know this, and the women know this, and the prevailing law of the jungle maintains peace and social order. But.

Our tango gene pool is flooded with Alphas! What's a girl to do, I know, there are worse fates. They're beautiful. They're passionate, proud, charming, successful, charismatic, accomplished, and they're friends with everybody. They're dead sexy. And they do come in slightly different flavours—romantic Alphas, brilliant Alphas, smouldering Alphas, stealth Alphas. Just thinking about them makes me want to shuck my knickers, it's glorious. But what's great for we women must be a real problem for the kings themselves! Because Alphaness is being the king of a social circle. They can afford to be benevolent when they're leading and everyone else is following. But what happens when you have too many kings leading?

I can see the tacit jostling that happens within the mid-level ranks of the aristocracy. Men know where they stand vis-à-vis other men. Barons, counts, lords, viscounts, marquises, they all know when to puff out their chests and when to defer. But I have to wonder what happens at the top. Sometimes they work out a custody schedule: you can have this milonga, and I'll take this one. But what happens when they come to the same milonga? There is no question of sitting in different places, because kings must sit on the throne no matter where they are and each milonga has its designated Power Spot and everyone knows where it is. And they often have the same Visiting Dignitary Friends, in which case, is there more power in hanging out first or second? And what about the kings who are like Richard Lionheart: only here sometimes? What happens when their visits to the kingdom overlap with other kings' visits? Do they growl? Do they joust? I've seen them maintain Tactful Silences in each other's presences. But I wonder what's going on beneath all that.

I know that friendship between men is a beautiful thing. All these classical Greek and Latin authors tell me so. But how are men friends? Usually they are friends with other men who are slightly less Alpha than they but not by too huge a margin. Doesn't it get lonely at the top, though? Don't they want to be with people who really understand what it's like to be them? On the other hand, being a man is about competing for resources. In this very stark and blatant case, the resources in question are women. And how can men possibly be friends with other men who are proven to be just as successful as they are at the Great Conquest? How can they be hunting buddies with someone who is their enemy? Because women aren't really like deer carcasses. You can't really divvy one up. Give one Alpha a haunch, another a breast, and so on. Alphas don't like that, because they're used to devouring the whole carcass.

And that brings up another question: the egalitarian nature of tango...because in order to go off biting into as much different juicy flesh as they like, the Alpha males who are used to getting whole woman-carcasses to themselves have to take their eyes off their women and let the women go do their own juicy flesh-biting. Are Alpha males still just as Alpha if their women go off and rub themselves against other men? Does it, in a way, make them more Alpha, because then everyone else gets to see what a great catch they have?

In the end, of course, there's only one thing more powerful than an Alpha man.